The Embrace

    The library is silent and dark. All the glowspheres hang dead, empty of magic. The high windows are closed. Weyrlady shuts the door slowly, wincing at the creak of the hinges. Undoing the clasps, she shrugs her cloak off with a twitch from her wings. Setting it on it's traditional hook by the door, (the only place in the library that Grall manages to keep clean,) she advances into the isles of books.
    It doesn't take her long to find him, even in the half light. He's sitting on his favorite chair. His right wing conceals most of his body from view, and it's tip rests calmly against his left, the two together form a steeple above his head, shielding him from what little light pours around the corners of the window slats. He holds his head in his hands, with his elbows on his knees and his neck arching back into the shadow of his wings.
    There is a small table before him, and spread out in the half dark, she see's the printed form of their correspondence over the last few days. She can feel his fear, it's strong on his scent, his left wing is twitching with anxiety, and his tail has practically worn a hole through the floor by rhythmically swaying back and forth. As she approaches she begins to hear. He's mumbling, reciting lines from old poetry to the waiting audience of the silent room. A floorboard creeks as she advances another step, and there is a shift in his voice.

    His mumbling doesn't stop, but changes tone, turning to the opening line of his best poem, and increasing in volume just enough to accommodate the singsong voice in wich he always says those few words.
 
    "Will you, won't you? Will you, won't you? Will you, won't you? Won't you join the dance?"

    His head raises slightly as he regards her in the darkness. He reaches out with one hand as his tail moves towards hers. But before he has even halfway closed the gap his muscles tense, his open palm closes into a fist that buries itself in shadow, and his tail loses it's direction as it resumes it's same nervous rhythm. He looks away.

    She steps forward once more, and rests a hand on his shoulder. As she does, he stands and turns towards her, but still he looks away, his eyes regarding the floor.
    "Good evening." he says, his voice a cracked whisper.
    She shakes her head. "It's still the afternoon."

    She feels the tendons in his shoulder move as his arm reaches out again, and again his muscles tense as he pulls away. She lets her hand fall from his shoulder and grab him about the waist, pulling him close. She feels his hands reach up as he does the same, his touch light, tentative. Yet with her head on his shoulder she can feel the falseness of the pressure, his entire body is ridged, every muscle straining to maintain some exact level of control. She moves her tail to entwine it with his, but it too is unmoving, a mere block of lead on the floor.
    "It's O.K." she whispers, "go ahead."
    Still he looks away, his voice barely audible. "I can't. I.. Couldn't stand to... to..." the whisper fades to a shuddering sigh. "To push you away."
    Quickly, gracefully, with a speed to great for him to avoid, she places a finger beneath his chin and pulls his face in her direction. Their eyes meet.
    "Please, go ahead." she whispers.
    She lets her hand fall to his side as he returns her embrace at last. His arms tighten about her waist and his tail entwines about her's as his wings spread out and around to enshroud them both. But still he looks away, he moves his head to her shoulder in a feeble attempt to hide it.
    She can feel another shuddering breath being drawn to his lungs as he begins to speak again, slowly at first, but the pace quickens with every desperate and confused word.
    "I almost lost you. To my horrendous stupidity, I almost lost you. I am so sorry. I survived all these years by holding the world away from me, by looking at it from arm's length. But then there was you, and you pulled me back down from the darkness and remoteness and brought me back to where I had been before. You pulled me back to the world and stripped away all the layers of restraint and protection that I had built up over the years to save me from my lack of social graces. But those layers were a two way street. With the last one gone, I didn't know what to do any more, and so I just stumbled about."
    There was another shudder, combined with the beginnings of a sob.
    "I just stumbled about until like a goddamn retard I let drop the wrong rules and reached out in the wrong way, and... and... scared you, hurt you. When I realized what I had done, I thought I had lost you for sure. So I just pulled away, went back to where I had been before there was you. I reset the layers and pulled away from the world until I could see it at arm's length again. Until I was standing in the dark, alone, watching it all pass by like I used to."
 He stops again, his whole body shuddering as he breaks down into a series of lengthy sobs.
    "It.t.t.t.s just s.so cold out there. I had n-never seen it before. I w-was used to it. But I had spent all that time out there... alone. A-and I never knew until I went back. H-how lonely I had been." his speaking stops at last as he breaks down into full out tears...